


One Single Static Frame

by rose_indigo_and_tom



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: BPD!Parse, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:01:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7578655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rose_indigo_and_tom/pseuds/rose_indigo_and_tom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the first 30 days after he gets to Vegas, he learns the name and nickname of everyone on the team. In the second 30 days, he becomes intimately acquainted with the bars within a 5 block radius of his apartment, feeling older than his 18 years until he gets carded. In the third 30 days, he buys a PlayStation and plays Grand Theft Auto every night and only goes outside for practices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There is some self-harm type thinking in this fic, but it's nothing graphic at all, and it's never referred to as such or described in much detail. There's also description of problematic drinking habits, but again it's not super specific. Since it is about a character with BPD that type of stuff is going to be talked about, so if you know that'll be triggering for you, please steer clear of this! 
> 
> The title is from the song Autoclave, by The Mountain Goats.

Ever since the overdose, Kent has told himself that he’s lucky, in a way, because his life isn’t fucked, not really. Like, sure he’s sad and angry most of the time, and that certainly isn’t fun. But he’s not in rehab. He’s going first in the draft, and then he’s moving to Las Vegas, and then he’s getting his own apartment and living his own life. He’s successful. He’s not stuck back in Montréal at some clinic or coaching peewee. He gets to be with a great team, playing great hockey, and partying without being under the thumb of his mom or a billet family for the first time in his life. (Sometimes he thinks this is what college would’ve been like if he’s gone— intense periods of work followed by intense periods of drinking.)

 

When he first moves there’s the rush to set up an apartment, which he does quickly and heavily aided by Ikea, and then there’s camp, where he struggles to prove himself good enough for the Aces instead of their farm team (he is, of course). He’s meeting so many new people, falling into the rhythm of the place, trying so hard to prove that he really did deserve the first spot in the draft. 

 

He barely has time to think about Jack once he moves to Vegas, doesn’t  _ really _ dwell on the idea of his best friend lying cold on the bathroom floor. At first he figures Zimms will call when he gets out, which Google tells him will be anywhere from 30 to 90 days. He tells himself he isn’t being abandoned. He can’t be being abandoned again, left behind just like his father left his family. Even though they’ll be far apart, Zimms will still call him as much as he can, they’ll find a way to make it work, their relationship can keep being something like what it was. Different, because everything is different now, but not so different. 

 

The days go past, ticked off in black Sharpie on his kitten calendar. 

 

In the first 30 days, he learns the name and nickname of everyone on the team. In the second 30 days, he becomes intimately acquainted with the bars within a 5 block radius of his apartment, feeling older than his 18 years until he gets carded. In the third 30 days, he buys a PlayStation and plays Grand Theft Auto every night and only goes outside for practices. 

 

He calls every day for the first 30 days, and no one answers. He leaves messages that grow increasingly more desperate, until he fills up Jack’s voicemail space and has to stop. He doesn’t call again after that, telling himself again that it could be another two months before Jack is out of rehab. He tries to restrain himself from being stupid and clingy, throwing himself into the  bars and GTA.  

 

When 91 days are up, and the only people who have called him remain his mother and his little sister, he calls again. No one picks up. 

 

Intellectually he knows that this should not be a big deal. People don’t pick up for all kinds of reasons, and there is a three hour time difference, so maybe he’s messed it up somehow and it’s not a convenient time in Montreal. But knowing something intellectually is a quite a bit different from feeling it and believing it. So he gets the bottle of vodka he persuaded an older player to buy him, drinks more of it than he ought to, and finds a set of abs on Grindr to hook up with. 

 

The next day he skips optional skate to stare at a wall for four hours. 

 

On the 94th day, he calls Alicia Zimmerman, and she picks up on the first ring, almost like she’s been waiting for him to call. Before he has a chance to say anything at all she says “Hello Kent” in her melodic voice, and then “He’s okay. He’s out of rehab, and everything’s going to be fine, it really is, but he’s asked that you not call. He wants to make a fresh start. I’m really sorry. You know how much we care about you, and we know how much you care about him, but it’s for the best.” And then she hangs up. He hurls the phone at the wall opposite his couch and it bounces off, falling to the floor with a splintering clatter. 

 

It stays there for the next 24 hours before he kicks it underneath the couch, sliding smoothly across his carpet like a hockey puck over the ice. He deletes Jack from his social media, hides the photos he has of them underneath his winter coats, a drawer of things he doesn’t need in his new life here. He can’t quite bring himself to tear them up or throw them away, alternates between wanting to shred them like cabbage and wanting to tape them to his mirror like nothing’s happened.

 

The next day he gets a new phone and a new faceless hookup from Grindr. His nights and days swing from the hyper-focused energetic drive of the team and the ice to the lethargic weight that settles in the further he gets from the arena, to the manic rush he feels when he’s out with the team or at a bar picking up someone just as meaningless as the men he meets online. That rush doesn’t last long though, and it all just settles back into emptiness, nothingness, an itch under his skin he can’t claw at. 

 

At practice he pushes himself harder and harder, seeking the clearheaded bliss he feels with a hockey stick between his hands, ice rushing by under his skates. Everything narrows down to the players and the puck, and it’s not nearly as seamless as when he was playing with Jack, but it  _ works _ . And if he’s getting a few more bruises, a few more strained muscles, those are only occupational hazards of the NHL, right? It doesn’t mean anything that the satisfying aches and twinges ground him, take his mind off the world every time he feels them.

—————

The Aces first game is against the Flyers. They lose, but not before Kent has a chance to score a goal. The celly afterwards feels good, the familiar crush of players around him lifting his mood. The not-celebration afterwards is both even better and also terrible. He gets blackout drunk, and apparently calls Zimms while he’s at the bar. Five times. Even though he promised Alicia he wouldn’t. 

 

The games that follow aren’t bad. The Aces win more than they lose, and the wins follow a similar pattern of cellies and triumphant drinking and drunken calls to Jack, until one night he calls and the answering machine of a little old Québecoise woman picks up. Kent deletes the number from his phone after that, because even drunk-Parse has a mama who raised him to know better than to bother old ladies at hours that are ridiculously late even by Vegas standards. 

 

When the Aces play the Blackhawks in Chicago, someone trips him. It’s obviously against the rules, but no one sees, so there’s nothing he can do about it. While Kent struggles to get up, the guy asks “Is that how you like it, Parson? Like being on your knees?” and then spits a slur at him. 

 

He isn’t that much bigger than Kent, only about an inch taller, and so as soon as he’s standing he drops his gloves. The fight is dirty, and they both get in a few good hits. Kent thinks maybe he breaks the Blackhawks player’s nose, because blood is streaming down his face, a few drips staining the ice. Some of his own blood runs warm and hot into his eye, and he grins crookedly at the pain. 

 

The linesman pulls them apart after only a few seconds, which is probably for the best. Kent knows he should’ve let the comments roll off his back, knows he heard worse in juniors, knows he’ll hear worse in the future. But the rush of anger he’d felt at the other player had been overwhelming, all consuming. He keeps grinning all the way to the penalty box, where someone comes to look at the gash over his eye. They decide it isn’t bad enough to need stitches, and that’s that. 

 

As if the exhilaration of a fight and the taste of copper in his mouth weren’t enough, the Aces win, scoring a goal in the last minute of regulation to make it 3-2. 

—————

It’s the middle of November now, and it’s been a little over five months since the overdose. Since the draft. Since his intense relationship with Zimms ended as if it had never even existed. He’s not over it, by any stretch of the imagination, still sometimes catches himself looking at Bad Bob’s twitter and [ ESPN.com](http://ESPN.com) for any news of how Jack could be doing. But he feels better about it somehow, feels less raw and like maybe there are other people in the world that he could potentially be interested in for more than a hookup.

 

He meets such a person at a charity event, a pale skinned brunette with blue eyes. They’re seated next to each other at the dinner table, and the person to Kent’s left is some old man who he is sure is important somehow (or maybe just rich). The woman next to him, her legs stretching for miles out from under the white fabric of her dress, seems a far more interesting companion, so he strikes up a conversation. It ought to be weird, because she’s definitely at least 25 and very hot and he might be in the NHL but he is still only 19 and the only serious relationship he’s ever had was with a boy. Who was obligated to spend time with him because of being on the same hockey team. 

 

“Um. Hi.” he says, a little uncomfortably, when he sits down.

 

The woman laughs a little, but not in a mean way, more as if to indicate “You’re a little awkward and it’s cute.” She says “Hello! I’m Kiera!” and holds out a hand to shake. 

 

He takes it, and introduces himself, explaining he’s there with the Aces. She tells him she works in PR for one of the casinos who donated money to the charity, so she’s there to be their public presence at the event. Once they have drinks, their conversation flows a little more easily, the alcohol taking the edge off his nervousness. They talk about work, and home, because it turns out she’s from Syracuse and understands how weird it feels to be in this hot, dry, alien land. When the dinner comes to an end, Kent isn’t nearly as drunk as he would normally be on a Saturday night. He’s sober enough to think to ask for her number and just go home, instead of trying to get her to drunkenly hook up with him, like she were just another warm body.

 

He ends up texting her the next day, and they go and get coffee after practice at some little place near her work. When he walks away from the café, he’s surprised at how much he likes her. If he knew it wouldn’t ruin his chances, he’d call her again right now and ask when he could see her again. Sure, it’s only been two days, and he only knows like ten things about her, but she’s just so easy to talk to that he ended up telling her far more than he ever meant to about how things have been going in Vegas. Things he hasn’t even told his mother, like about breaking his phone on the wall and the month he spent in his apartment playing GTA. 

 

He sees her again for dinner a couple days later and they end up back at her apartment to have sex, but before they get to the actual sex part he sort of freaks out. 

 

“I’m sorry…” he says raggedly as he swallows past the tightness in his throat. “I haven’t really done dating with someone I actually cared about since my last relationship…it’s different when you actually know the person, you know? I just don’t want to fuck it up…” 

 

Instead of immediately being scared off and asking him to leave, she just climbs out of his lap and gets him a glass of water. He ends up spilling the whole story to her, forgetting that he’s not out, and that if anyone else ever learned this story his career would be fucked, and that this is definitely not the way to win over a girl, by telling her how fucked up you are by your ex-boyfriend who tried to fucking kill himself. When he’s done explaining, she pats his shoulder gently and gives him a hug. 

 

“I’m sorry.” he mutters again, this time in a very different tone. Not apologizing for what he’s doing, but instead for what he’s about to do: get up off her couch and run out the door, barely glancing at her as he does so. He’s in such a hurry he leaves his phone on the coffee table, and his shirt hangs unbuttoned over his jeans with the fly open.

Thankfully he does remember his keys, and he gets into his car and drives away, out past the lights and onto I-515. He doesn’t get off at any of the exits, just drives for maybe 30 minutes, until he isn’t breathing so weird anymore (he sounds like Zimms, some far off part of his brain thinks). He settles into the feeling of the road and the darkness and the headlights around him, his consciousness watching from afar as he goes down the road, the top of his convertible down and the radio blasting Top 40 Hits. 

 

After maybe 30 miles, the little part of his brain that is still paying some sort of attention says “Hey. Maybe we should turn around before we get lost in the desert?” and he somehow manages to be alert enough to heed the advice. He gets back to his apartment late, at 1 or 2 (he lost track of time while he was driving, and it felt like three hours and half an hour and three minutes all at the same time), and he has practice in the morning, so he crashes almost as soon as he gets into bed. 

 

When he gets to the arena the next day, the woman at the desk hands him his phone. “A young woman dropped it off earlier this morning. She said to call her?” 

 

“Thanks. Um. Did she seem upset or anything when she said that?” he asks, nervously and a little quietly, in case any of the team are around to chirp him for this. 

 

“She did seem worried…but not mad or anything,” the woman says, a frown creasing her forehead. She looks like she wants to ask more, but Kent walks away before she has a chance to, shooting a quick “Thanks” over his shoulder as he goes to get changed. 

 

He does call Kiera that evening, leaning against his countertop as he eats something nutritionist-approved but not exactly delicious. When she picks up, she says “Kent! Thank goodness!” instead of her usual cheery “Hello!”

 

“Hi Kiera,” he says, cautiously. “Thank you for bringing my phone to the arena.”

 

“Oh it was no problem at all! I’m mostly just concerned about you! You seemed really upset last night when you left and I had no way of knowing whether you got home safe or not, and also that stuff you said last night was a little worrying, and so I just wanted to check in with you!” 

 

“I’m okay. I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have run away like that, and I shouldn’t have dumped all that shit on you when we just met.” he says. He really likes this girl, and he’ll be damned if he can’t be mature some of the time when he needs to.

 

“Oh Kent,” Kiera sighs. “Obviously it isn’t ideal to find out that the person you’re interested in is still sort of hung up on an ex, but I’m not totally scared away. I’ve been in your shoes.”

 

Kent closes his eyes, leans forward so his forehead brushes the cabinets, the pale wood cool and smooth.

“Thanks,” he says finally. “It means a lot to hear that. Can I see you tomorrow or something?”

—————

So they go on a date, and it goes well and he goes home with Kiera and isn’t a mess like the last time. After that they see each other almost every day. She comes to the home games and he texts her when they go on roadies and he tries not to think about how intense it is or how quickly things are moving. It’s good. She makes him happy. The little things that had plagued him before, the emptiness and the anger, vanish overnight.

 

The guys on the team notice almost right away that there must be something up, and they chirp him about how they all knew he just needed to get laid, and how they can see it on his face, and he can’t even find it in himself to be upset, because he’s over the moon about Kiera. She’s so beautiful and open and kind and funny and so many things that Zimms wasn’t. When a little voice in his head wonders why he was so drawn to another tall brunette with blue eyes, he tells that little voice to fuck off. 

 

Kiera comes back to his apartment for the first time a few weeks into their relationship. Maybe it’s weird that they usually always go to her place, but he’s a 19 year old who lives alone. His house isn’t exactly the neatest place, and at least 70% of the furniture is shit from Ikea he and his mom put together in one day. 

 

Before she comes over, Kent spends the afternoon trying to tidy things a little, putting the piles of clothes into a laundry basket or his dresser, washing the dishes that are in the sink, changing the sheets on his bed. With all his crap cleaned up it strikes him that his apartment is pretty empty. There’s nothing on the walls or end tables, and the bookshelf in his living room is mostly empty. The only thing that’s definitely his, and not something out of a stock photo of an apartment, is a framed photo of him and his mother and his sister from a few summers ago. 

 

He meets Kiera at a trendy restaurant she picked out, some tapas place where you have to order like three things per person to actually get a full meal’s worth of food. What you get, though, is good, a riot of different flavors and colors that runs from starchy potatoes in a spicy, creamy, tomato sauce to white fish with coriander and watermelon, of all things. Kent isn’t really a foodie, but Kiera is, and so he’s been trying lots of different places she wants to go. This one is a little weird, but he can see why she wanted to come here. The meal is different from what he would expect, lots of flavors that seem like they shouldn’t be good together but are.

 

When they’ve eaten the last olives and finished their glasses of wine, Kent pays the bill and they drive back to his apartment, Kiera following his car in her own little red Fiat. In the parking deck for his apartment building, she climbs out carefully, her black dress tight around her thighs and her black patent leather pumps a little precarious. He’s far less careful, feeling loose-limbed from the wine they drank at dinner and the rush of driving through Vegas at night he hasn’t yet tired of.

 

Kiera doesn’t say much about his apartment, but she has a far away look on her face that makes him feel like she must be judging him for it. He looks around hurriedly to make sure there isn’t something weird he’s left out, but it doesn’t really seem like there is. It must just be how everything is the same weird Ikea white fake-wood stuff. He walks into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of water, offering the same to Kiera when he comes back into the living room. She shakes her head, though, deciding instead to sit down on the couch and take off her shoes. He sits next to her and they talk for a while before she climbs into his lap to kiss him.

 

When he decides to move things to his bedroom (he didn’t change the sheets for nothing!), he just picks her up, her legs around his waist. An odd, disconnected part of his brain thinks about how he used to carry his little sister like this when she was a child, how he’d throw her down on her bed in exactly the same way, but with totally different intentions. 

 

He bends over to switch on the lamp on his bedside table, casting a golden glow over Kiera and the duvet. The light also illuminates the calendar hanging on the front of his closet door. The calendar with kittens on it. That he got because even though he’s supposed to be tough, he sort of isn’t and still really loves kittens. And maybe wants one more than most things in the world.

 

Kiera looks at it and giggles softly. “Do you like cats, then, babe?”

 

“Uh…yeah.” Kent manages. Now is not exactly the moment he wants to be thinking about cats. “I’ve been really wanting to get one, I just have to figure out what I’m going to do with it when we play away games.”

 

“Oh.” Kiera says quickly. Diplomatically, but Kent sees through it. She’s usually more enthusiastic than this. 

 

“Oh?” 

 

“I’m just not the biggest fan of cats. Or dogs, really. Too much trouble, you know?”

 

And Kent does know. Lots of people don’t like cats or dogs. They can shed, and training them can be hard, and they can be a hassle to deal with if you want to go out of town. So he goes back to kissing Kiera, and their night goes much more like he has expected it would. 

 

But as he’s lying in bed after, his arms around Kiera, her back pressed to his front, all he can think about is her comment about cats.  _ How could he be dating someone who wouldn’t like his cat? _ And the more he thinks about that, the more he starts to think of all the other little things that bother him about Kiera, like how she always chooses most of the dishes when they go out to eat, and how she wears too much perfume sometimes, so his car always smells kind of weird after she’s been in it. He falls asleep long after she does, doubts tumbling around in his mind.

 

Kent wakes up the next morning before her, too, and carefully extricates himself to make some coffee and toast. He stands in the kitchen and leans against his countertop, sipping his coffee slowly. The doubts he had last night don’t seem to have vanished over night, and he feels almost spiteful now, more and more things Kiera has done wrong coming back to him, more ways they don’t fit perfectly together. 

 

When she wakes up an hour later, Kent is sitting on his couch playing GTA and trying not to think about her. He tries to greet her normally, with a smile and a kiss, but it all feels contrived to him. They have breakfast together, and then she leaves around 11 because it’s Sunday and they both have things to do before the work week starts. Kent says he’ll text her later, and then she puts back on her teetery high heels and walks out the door. 

 

He does text her later, sort of. Only to say, “I’m really sorry, but I don’t think this is going to work out between us.” And then he deletes her number so he won’t be tempted to text her again later, and deletes her replies without reading them. 

—————

His life sort of goes back to the way it had been after that. He’s not miserable, but he’s not particularly happy either. He plays good hockey, getting better all the time. He feels like his life is meaningless outside of hockey, which is technically his job, making that a really depressing statement. He gets bored of GTA and buys the newest Call of Duty game instead. He finds a favorite bar where he doesn’t get recognized, so he can continue hooking up with people he meets there, who won’t tell the media anything about him. He loses his cool on the ice and gets into a couple more fights, but nothing serious.

 

He does make friends with people on the team, though. Not that they weren’t friends before, but he finds a couple people close enough to hang out with on days without games or practices, to invite over to his apartment or to go to basketball games and concerts with. The person he knows best is a tall, dark haired left-winger from Michigan called Swoops. He plays on Kent’s line most of the time, and they work well together on the ice. He’s only a year older than Kent, young enough that he isn’t married or in a serious relationship like a lot of the older guys. When Swoops is over at Kent’s, they can play Mario Kart, which he likes, and he knows he won’t get judged because of what his apartment looks like. 

 

He doesn’t go home for Thanksgiving because there isn’t really time, and so many of the guys aren’t American anyway that it doesn’t matter to them. He and Swoops and a couple other guys go out to get Chinese and not sit alone while imagining their families at home without them. Not that any of them would really admit to missing their mamas, but there’s one guy from North Carolina who mentions a big southern family who have spent the whole week together, cooking and watching football and hanging out. He’s an enforcer, definitely not the type Kent would expect to have a soft spot for baby cousins and aunties. 

 

After Thanksgiving there are a couple more weeks of games, and then he has the 23-26 free to go back to Albany to spend Christmas with his mom and his sister. He buys them gifts online so he doesn’t have to worry about carrying stuff back in his luggage, but he does bring his sister some corny, touristy Las Vegas souvenirs. Probably he spent way too much of gifts, but he barely has anything else to spend money on, and he knows how tight money is for his family, so he wants to help out how he can. His mom won’t take just money from him, but he can buy her other things she wants or needs but won’t be able to get on her own. 

 

He gets a flight that takes about 7 hours, with a stop in Detroit, which he likes because of the little red train that takes you around the terminal. When he gets to Albany, his mom and sister are waiting by baggage claim to pick him up, and they talk all the way back to their little apartment. 

 

Maybe it should be awkward, because Kent hasn’t seen them since the summer, and the months in between haven’t exactly been stellar, and he did date and then break up with a girl while only mentioning her to them twice, but it seems like they’ve picked up on the fact that he doesn’t want to talk about it. Instead, they ask about how the season’s going, how he likes the guys, how he likes Vegas, and Kent answers truthfully, because the answers to all of those questions are positive. Vegas is a good place to live. The other guys have all been really good to him, and he can talk about how he’s been spending time with Swoops. And the season isn’t going poorly at all. Of course it isn’t going brilliantly either, because you don’t get the number one draft pick by being a great team, but the team is doing better than expected. They might even make the playoffs, if they can win a higher proportion of their games in the new year. 

 

Christmas with his family is fun. It’s just him and his mom and sister now, not any extended family to speak of, so it’s rather quiet. On Christmas Eve they go to midnight mass and sing carols, and even though he doesn’t believe in God (that was pretty shot after he found Jack with his lips going blue), there’s something about being surrounded by people all singing together that silences the mess in his head. 

 

After Mass they all go to bed, because it’s nearly 2 by then. They wake up late, a privilege Kent doesn’t have nearly as much as he’d like. His mom cooks breakfast and they open their various gifts around the little tree his sister set up. She won’t admit to liking him at all, chirping him in every other sentence, but she gives herself away by laughing at all his jokes and hugging him tightly after he gives her a new laptop. It’s a shiny new Mac with a subscription to Spotify, and he knows it’s what she wanted, has heard her complain about how hard it is to do her homework when she has to use their mother’s computer for everything.

 

“I wish we’d gone first,” Kent’s mother says, laughingly. “Nothing we give you will really compare to a new laptop, now will it?”

 

Kent shakes his head. “No, mom. I don’t need a new laptop. And it’s not about what you get me anyway, is it? You know I’ll love whatever it is.” He might be a professional hockey player, but growing up with a single mom has made them close. He’d never tell the team that, knows he’d get called a mama’s boy, but it’s the truth.

 

His mom hands him a couple of wrapped packages, which turn out to include a cookbook and a new calendar with pictures of kittens on it. Small things that nobody else would have known he needed or wanted. 

 

They get to spend the rest of Christmas Day together, and his mother cooks a Christmas dinner far too big for three people. They have all the side dishes he remembers from growing up, and it reminds him so strongly of simpler Christmases past, before the draft and before he moved to Vegas. He knows he’s always been the sort of person he is now, always had these weird, tumultuous friendships, always been quick to anger and impulsive, always flipped through emotions like the pages of a book, but it’s been different since he moved.  _ Since the overdose _ , a part of his brain says. But he pushes it away. It’s fine. He’s just being nostalgic. It doesn’t help that between him and his mother they’ve drunk a full bottle of wine, so he’s feeling a little melancholy. 

 

He does his best to tell his brain to shut up and stop being so sad, and focuses extra hard on the story his little sister is telling about something that had happened at school. And then it really is quite funny, and the sound of being surrounded by his family’s laughter drives the melancholy thoughts from his head for the rest of the night.

————-

The next morning Kent gets on a plane back to Vegas, because the Aces are playing the Stars on the 27th. He’s sad to leave his mother and sister, because he really did have a good Christmas, but it’s also good to be getting back into his routine. And if pressed, he would have to admit that the weather in Vegas in December is nicer than the weather in Albany. In July, certainly not. But it’s really nice to be able to go outside without spending ten minutes putting on warm clothes. 

 

Somehow they manage to beat the Stars, even if it is in overtime. Then on New Year’s Eve they beat the Oilers, both games in Vegas. He doesn’t drop his gloves at either game, doesn’t even really want to, which is very good. He’s too small to be any good at fighting, and too valuable to the team to spend much time in the penalty box. He’s on the first line, for goodness sake, which isn’t exactly something that happens to every rookie. 

  
After they beat the Oilers the whole team goes out to ring in the New Year, and Kent gets way too drunk for a 19 year old at a bar, and hopes that 2010 will be better than 2009, because Jesus. This was not how he wanted his year to go. He is playing great hockey, but he lost his best friend, and his life feels like it could fall apart at any moment, like someone’s going to call him up and tell him there’s been some kind of mistake. He’s angry a quarter the time, and feels like nothing means anything another quarter. And there was that huge mess bullshit with Kiera, which he spends a lot of time trying not to think about. So yeah, he wants 2010 to be better. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is both shorter than the last one and unbeta'd because, like this version of Kent, I have BPD and that means it's not always the easiest to get things done. But oh well! Here y'all go!

There isn’t an All-Star Game that year, which Kent is sort of happy about, because it means there’s less worry that he’ll be at any event Bad Bob could also be at. January continues without it, marching towards the end of the regular season, still playing good hockey and still feeling basically the same way he has since July. Not great, but not terrible.

After what happened with Jack, Kent has been trying to watch himself a little to make sure that doesn’t end up being him. He drinks, a lot, but he’s careful not to let it be like, a thing. Or at least not the kind of thing that could potentially get him killed. And he’s heard the health class spiel about depression and suicide that every other fourteen year old gets in freshman phys-ed. He’s not depressed and he’s not going to drink himself into a coma, so he figures it’s fine. Keeps doing what he’s been doing and trying not to think too hard about it.

He makes friends with more people on the team, beyond just going to lunch with them or bars after games. There’re a few of the younger guys (Swoops, the second round pick from his year, and a D-man who was drafted the year before) who have taken to coming around on Saturday afternoons to play video games or watch movies and eat food. It’s not the type of friendship where anybody really talks about their feelings, but it’s good to not be alone in his place as much. They seem to really like him, and that’s a good feeling. Kent has never had trouble making people like him, but it’s a feeling that doesn’t get old.

Sometimes, on Kent’s worst days, Swoops stays after the other two have gone home and they drink too much and sit and listen to music as the light that filters through his big windows fades into neon. They don’t talk about these days.

On the ice he’s still doing well, is carving out a solid place for himself on the first line with Swoops and an older guy on the right wing, one of the alternate captains. Because the Aces franchise is so young, the vast majority of the players are young, and so saying an older guy really doesn’t mean much. The guy, Tavvy, was drafted to the Aces from the Rangers in the expansion draft, not picked up in the years since. But he has a wife and a daughter, and his life seems miles apart from Kent’s own. They play well together, though, and that’s what really matters.

—————

The Aces don’t make the playoffs. That’s not much of a surprise, because they’re such a new team, the newest by far in their division, but it still hurts. What is a surprise is how close they came to making it—they come fourth out of nine in the division. In interviews, Kent talks about how they all worked really hard, and how they’re all looking forward to trying again next season, and it’s not even a lie for the media. The team knew they had a small chance at making it, but they still did well. If they can do just a bit better next season, which is likely, they have a good shot at the making the playoffs then. More time playing together and another couple draft picks will help.

The day after their season ends and Kent is officially allowed to go, he’s on the first flight back to New York. He stays with his mom and his sister Jenny again and starts looking for houses or apartments in the area, ostensibly for him to live during the summer, but also because his mom won’t let him just buy her a house, but might live in a house if he says he’s buying it for himself. He ends up finding a townhouse in Center Square that’s plenty big enough for the three of them. It’s not exactly the place people might expect Party BoyTM Kent Parson to live, but it’s a good place for his family, and if there’s one thing the gossip columnists get wrong, it’s that partying is his favorite activity.

He spends time with Jenny and his mom, and goes to New York City a couple times to have something interesting to do for the weekend. He works out and sleeps plenty and his mother shows him how to cook more things for himself (contrary to the stereotypes, just because he is a young, wealthy, single man does not mean he wants to eat all his meals out).

He doesn’t miraculously feel perfect. There are still moments when he wants to punch a wall, or when he feels like he’s just drifting along, like there’s no point to going back to Vegas at the end of the summer. But it’s better, for the most part. He can’t drink too much when he has a 15 year old to look after while his mom is at work, and being around his sister really does help. They go to the animal shelter together to ogle the kittens, and go running in the park, and she convinces him to take her to the Albany Institute of History and Art a couple times.

He goes back to Vegas at the end of June for the NHL awards and he wins the Calder. It’s not a given that he’d win, even if he did go first in the draft, so it feels good. And weird: for maybe the millionth time in the past year he thinks about how he always assumed it would be Zimms doing the things he’s doing. Zimms going first in the draft, Zimms helping save his franchise, Zimms winning the Calder. But instead it’s him.

Bad Bob is at the awards, of course, and he corners Kent at one point, just when he thinks he’ll be able to escape without having to talk to him.

“Kent, hello,” he says, sitting down in the chair recently vacated by one of the Aces’ wives. “I want you to know how very proud Alicia and I are. This might not have been what we expected, but we’re so glad to see you’re doing well.” There is an honest-to-God tear in his eye as he says that, and Kent digs his nails into his palm to keep himself from wondering how things have been at the Zimmermann’s this past year.

“Uh. Thank you, sir. That means a lot,” Kent manages. His throat is dry and speaking feels hard emotionally, like saying the words costs him some huge amount of energy somehow. He takes a shaky, rattling breath. “How, um…” he trails off, not knowing how to say what he wants to say.

“Jack is better,” Bad Bob says. “He’s out of rehab, has been spending some time with Alicia in Nova Scotia, away from the media.”

Kent closes his eyes for the briefest moment, takes another deep breath. “Thank you for telling me,” he says. “I know he doesn’t want to talk to me right now, but for what it’s worth, I’m glad to hear he’s doing well.” Then he tosses back the last of his drink and gets up. “I think I ought to go say hello to a few more people. Have a good evening.”

He clenches his hands into fists inside his pockets, takes the most direct route to the bathroom and locks himself inside one of the stalls until he’s sure he’s not going to scream, cry, or hit someone. When he comes out, he makes his excuses and goes home early. He goes to bed right away, even though it’s only 10, because he just wants to turn off his thoughts for a while.

—————

After the awards, Kent goes back to Albany. He pretends he isn’t thinking about Zimms, and makes plans to take Jenny to DC for a couple of days. They stay with his mother’s sister, and Kent plays with her cats and takes trips to more art museums and to the theater and to see the Nationals play. It’s a fun time, really , even if he isn’t a huge fan of musicals or Impressionist painters.

He never got on this well with Jenny before he moved to Vegas, but it seems the saying “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” really does apply here. Kent realizes how much she’s grown up, thinks about how when he was her age hew was already thinking about which QMJHL team he would be drafted to the next year. Jenny at 15 worries about her grades and vehemently denies any interested in boys (or girls for that matter), and reads an awful lot. She goes running with him in the mornings sometimes, not blinking an eye when Kent unsubtly brings them past Alex Ovechkin’s Arlington condo (It’s not weird, he tells himself. It’s not his fault his aunt lives a mile and a half away from the Capital’s star player, and besides he isn’t even there in the summer).

When he and Jenny return to New York, only a few days pass before Kent gets bored again, which is bad. A bored Parse is one who finds old friends in the area and goes out to parties too often, trying to drive the emptiness out of his brain, to scratch the itching inside his veins, to fill his mind with static. His mother notices, of course, but since he never actually comes home drunk, and keeps working out and eating like he’s supposed to, there’s not a whole awful lot she can do, besides telling him to be careful.

When he heads back to Vegas at the end of his summer break, he’s gained a decent amount of weight and muscle mass, has hooked up with no less than three of his high school friends, one of whom played in the NHL now (though he’d never tell who), and has learned how to cook enough different meals to only eat the same thing once every two weeks.

Stepping off the plane at McCarran, Kent is hit with a wave of heat—that’s one thing he for sure hasn’t missed. It permeates the jet bridge, which quickly becomes stuffy with the number of people waiting to disembark. Swoops is waiting to pick him up just on the other side of security, because Kent had taken a cab to the airport before. It’s good to see him, and they get pizza and play Mario Kart to celebrate being back.

—————

The Aces had gotten thirteenth pick in the draft that year, and their first round pick is pretty good, a defenseman from Saskatchewan whose team lost the Memorial Cup at the last possible moment. He works decently with their other defensemen in training camp, and it really looks like the team will be better this year. They didn’t lose any of their best players over the summer, and Kent’s prediction that playing together more will really help their game is coming true.

In the first week of the regular season, after they win spectacularly against the Ducks, the team goes out to celebrate at a bar that’s maybe a little more…alternative than usual. Kent isn’t sure why they do it, suspects maybe somebody’s girlfriend suggested it. It’s far from a full-on gay bar, but the crowd is definitely made up of more flamboyant men than your typical sports bar. The alcohol on offer is all that local microbrewery shit, even the drinks that aren’t actually beer. Someone orders a pitcher of something for the table, and as usual the staff turns a blind eye to the fact that some of the guys drinking aren’t actually 21.

Once everybody’s gotten a little buzzed, some of the guys start to split off, going to chat up girls who are more tattooed and pierced than the women at their usual place. The guys with kids head home around the same time, and Kent spots swoops leaving with a tall blonde not long after. He walks over to the bar to ask for a glass of water, and as he’s waiting a man a little older than him, maybe 22, comes up to him. He’s cute, with sort of red-brown hair and green eyes, taller than Kent, and bigger too, like he must work out a lot.

“I’m Owen,” the man says with a smile meant to charm.  
“I’m Kent,” he replies, returning the smile.  
“Can I buy you a drink?”  
“Um. I was waiting on a water, but sure.” Kent names the beer they’d been drinking earlier. It wasn’t his favorite but he’s honestly not sure what else is on offer.  
“Cool,” Owen says.

The water and the beer arrive around the same time, but Kent makes himself drink half the glass of water first, because he knows he doesn’t want a hangover tomorrow if he can help it. He chats with Owen for a while, your typical small talk stuff, and hopes that the rest of the guys don’t look over at them and make some kind of dumbass comment. Thankfully no one does, all too absorbed in their own drinks and pretty girls to say anything.

They don’t hook up in the bathroom, because Owen and this bar are classier than that, but they do go home together. Kent tries to leave after he sleeps with Owen, tells himself he’s not looking for a relationship, reminds himself of what happened the last two times. But Owen makes some dumb joke, and he curls up around Kent, who is so sleepy, and the next thing he knows, he’s alone in bed in a strange apartment, sunlight streaming in through the blinds, and the smell of coffee is wafting into the room. He gets up and puts on his boxers and t-shirt from the night before before going to investigate.

Owen is standing in the kitchen, dressed like he was going to work out, toasting bread under the broiler. He smiles when he sees Kent, and hands him a cup of coffee. As much as Kent isn’t looking for anything serious, he has to admit he slept really well the night before, and it’s nice to have woken up to coffee. So, even though he tells himself it’s a terrible idea, he gives Owen his number and they agree to have dinner later in the week.

And that’s it for him. It’s the start of another relationship, one with dinner dates and sex and that constant dance of “How much can I tell you about my life?” and “Am I being too clingy?” and “How soon is too soon for this?” He doesn’t tell anyone on the team, can’t tell anyone on the team, because that would mean explaining that he isn’t actually straight, which Kent has no plans on doing. He’s careful to meet Owen only in places where he doesn’t think they’ll find any hockey fans, to keep PDA to a minimum, to bring changes of clothes when he stays over, so he won’t be seen in a walk of shame.

Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s pass in a blur of hockey and Owen and his mom and Jenny, and Kent wishes he could take Owen home to New York, but knows it’s too soon, knows he doesn’t want to drive him away. He tries to explain to Owen that he’s not good at relationships, but to no avail. The other man just says “You’re fine Kent. You don’t need to worry about it,” and kisses him or cuddles him, and Kent wants him to be right so badly that he doesn’t protest.

(Just after New Year’s, he’s named to the All-Star Team, and that’s a good feeling, to know he stands out to fans enough for them to want him on a team with Ovechkin and Letang. That he’s not just the substitute for Jack Zimmermann anymore. The moment when he finds out about the All-Star Game stands out, even if nothing else about that winter does.)

—————

Of course, he couldn’t keep his relationship hidden forever, and the excuses he makes to Swoops grow more and more transparent, until one day after practice he confronts Kent about it. He showers quickly and heads out to the parking lot, leaning against the driver’s side door of Kent’s car until he gets there. Kent looks a little panicked when he sees him standing there, and Swoops feels bad, but not that bad.

“Hey Parser!” he calls when Kent is maybe 20 feet away.  
“Swoops.” Kent replies cautiously.  
“What’s going on with you, man? You keep blowing me off when I ask to hang out, and you’ve seemed a little distracted lately.”  
Kent laughs nervously. “What do you mean? I’m on a ten game point streak!”  
“Not on the ice. You’ve always been able to leave whatever shit you’ve got behind once we’re skating. I just mean you’re always hung up in your phone, you avoid going out with the team, and I can’t remember the last time we played Mario Kart, bro! What, do you have some kind of secret girlfriend or something?”

He tries to laugh it off, but the way Kent’s cheeks color at “secret girlfriend” gives him away. Swoops laughs, because it’s a little funny to see Kent, basically a grown man, looking like a teenager caught making out behind the football fields. “Okay then,” he says when he stops laughing. “You should bring her around sometime, we’d all love to meet her.”

“Well, she’s kind of shy...” Kent scrambles, trying to come up with another excuse.  
“Come on, Parse!”  
“Look, I uh. I really need to go, Swoops. We’re supposed to have lunch today. Do you want to come over later? We could do dinner, hang out?” Kent says, wanting to be away from this situation as soon as possible. Thankfully, Swoops consents, and pushes off the side of the car before walking over to his own vehicle.

“I’ll see you at six!” he calls, and then closes the door and drives away, leaving Kent to sit in his car and mutter “Shit shit shit” to himself, until he calms down enough to drive home.

Lunch with Owen is good, if a bit tense after Kent tells him what happened with Swoops. “I wish you could tell him about us. I mean, he’s your roommate for away games, he’s your best friend on the team— do you really want to keep lying to him like this?” Owen asks.

“You don’t understand. There are no openly gay players in the NHL. I know I’m not the only one, but nobody’s telling the press that. If I tell Swoops, first it’ll get around the locker room, and some of the guys will say they don’t want a fag on the team, and then some stupid magazine will get wind of it, and when my contract’s up, no one will want to sign me! I can’t let this ruin my career! Hockey is the only thing I’m good for!” He’d tried to stay calm, but by the end of the little speech he’s almost yelling, drawing the attention of the people around them. He takes a deep breath, tries to get himself under control. Blinks and wipes the back of his hand across his eyes. Lowers his voice. “Look. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout at you.”

Owen seems shaken by the outburst, but still manages to reply “It’s okay, Kent. Clearly this is a sticky subject for you. We don’t have to talk about it anymore right now.” And so they don’t. After lunch, Owen goes back to work, and Kent goes home to try and clean up and maybe watch some Netflix and Skype Jenny before Swoops comes over.

He tells her about how it wears on him to be lying to his friend, and how worried he is that Owen’s going to leave him over being closeted, and Jenny does her best to reassure him enough that he stops feeling like he’s going to vibrate apart into shards of glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alex Ovechkin really did have a house or a condo or something in Arlington, but he doesn't live there now as far as I know. Not that it matters, just something I came across in the Washington Post and wanted to include. 
> 
> Please let me know what you thought! Comments mean so much!!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I don't totally know how many chapters this is going to have, but I don't think it'll be many, maybe 2 or 3? I also don't have a regular update schedule, but I already have more than this written, so it shouldn't be too awfully long before the next part. 
> 
> Please leave comments and let me know what you think! Also, check out my tumblr at rose-indigo-and-tom.tumblr.com


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